I didn't know what was wrong with my dishwasher until I read this article. I'm going to find a greymarket source for phosphate soap. Stockpile it like non-toxicwastesite bulbs.

The problem in this and in other feel-good environmental legislation, there is no coherent cost/benefit analysis done. So, what impacts the environment more, phosphates or the cost of additional water/soap/electricity to clean dishes?

Grace Segrist, of Mumma’s Appliances in central Pennsylvania, explains that for the last five years, dishwasher technology has been walking a tightrope between efficiency and performance and the switch to phosphate-free detergents finally pushed many consumers over the edge. “The old dishwashers used 16 to 18 gallons of water during a wash cycle,” Segrist explains, “and used hotter water, too.” Five years ago Energy Star units arrived on the scene that use only 6 to 8 gallons of lower-temperature water. Between those changes and the new detergents, Segrist estimates that about half her customers now call in to complain about the quality of the wash. Adding to the problem is that unlike when Coca-Cola made a big to-do of switching formulas in 1985, the new dish detergents were slipped onto shelves under cover of night. “People didn’t have a huge knowledge base on how phosphate-free would affect their dishwashers,” she says, “so people didn’t know what the problem was.”So why take out the phosphates in the first place? The environment, of course. When phosphorus gets into fresh water, it acts as a fertilizer for algae. When the bumper crop of algae later dies, its decomposition takes up oxygen in the water. And reduced levels of dissolved oxygen are harmful to fish.

One of the more interesting bits of knowledge that has emerged from the Psychoanalytic study of the mind over the last century is that unconscious conflicts can often be expressed in two diametrically opposed outcomes. The classic example is of the young child's hatred toward a new baby who displaces him form the center of his mommy's universe. The child would like to kill the baby (loving feelings toward a sibling develop much later and sometimes never develop at all) and often makes aggressive actions toward the intruder. There is a reason that wise parents do not leave 2 year olds alone with newborn siblings.

On Tuesday, two Brotherhood representatives participated in an opposition delegation that met with Vice President Omar Suleiman for the first set of talks over implementing political reforms.

Pundits have portrayed the Brotherhood as uncompromising zealots or beneficent providers of social services that long-deprived Egyptians desperately need.

But a translation released Tuesday of a 1995 book by the movement’s fifth official leader sheds light on just how Egypt’s Brotherhood views itself and its mission. Jihad is the Way is the last of a five-volume work, The Laws of Da’wa by Mustafa Mashhur, who headed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from 1996-2002.

They detail the Brotherhood’s objectives of advancing the global conquest of Islam and reestablishing the Islamic Caliphate, the public and private duties of jihad and the struggle Muslims must wage against Israel.

The full text, translated by PMW, will be posted Wednesday on the organization’s website, Palwatch.org.

“The Islamic ummah,” it says, referring to the supranational community of Muslims, “can regain its power and be liberated and assume its rightful position which was intended by Allah, as the most exalted nation among men, as the leaders of humanity.”

Elsewhere, it exhorts Muslims, “Know your status, and believe firmly that you are the masters of the world, even if your enemies desire your degradation.”

Marcus spoke to the Post about what he views as the danger of downplaying the Brotherhood’s ideology, or expecting it to moderate its objectives after being allowed into the political process. The movement differs from international terror groups like Al-Qaida, he said, only in tactics, not in its goals.

Marcus cited passages in the text that urge Muslims to wage jihad only when circumstances are ripe.

“The Brotherhood is not rushed by youth’s enthusiasm into immature and unplanned action which will not alter the bad reality and may even harm the Islamic activity, and will benefit the people of falsehood,” Mashhur wrote.

“One should know that it is not necessary that the Muslims repel every attack or damage caused by the enemies of Allah immediately, but [only] when ability and the circumstances are fit to it.”

Jihad is the Way explicitly endorses the reinstatement of a worldwide Islamic regime.

“It should be known that jihad and preparation towards jihad are not only for the purpose of fending off assaults and attacks of Allah’s enemies from Muslims, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state and strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world.”

“Jihad for Allah,” Mashhur wrote, “is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, and the State of Islam established.”

Hassan al-Banna, the movement’s founder, “felt the grave danger overshadowing the Muslims and the urgent need and obligation which Islam places on every Muslim, man and woman, to act in order to restore the Islamic Caliphate and to reestablish the Islamic state on strong foundations.”

Despite its universal message, the book attaches particular significance to the Holy Land.

“Honorable brothers have achieved shahada [martyrdom] on the soil of beloved Palestine, during the years ’47 and ’48, in their jihad against the criminal, thieving, gangs of Zion,” it says.

“Still today, memory of them horrifies the Jews and the name of the Muslim Brotherhood terrifies them.”

Elsewhere, Mushhar wrote, “The imam and shahid Hassan Al-Banna is considered as a martyr of Palestine, even if he was not killed on its soil ... in all his writings and conversations, he always urged towards jihad and aroused the desire for seeking martyrdom ... he did not content himself only with speech and writing, and when the opportunity arrived for jihad in Palestine, he hurried and seized it.”

Wielding a broader brush, Mashhur wrote, “The problems of the Islamic world – such as in Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea or the Philippines – are not issues of territories and nations, but of faith and religion.

They are the problems of Islam and all Muslims, and their resolution cannot be negotiated and bargained by recognizing the enemy’s right to the Islamic land he stole, and therefore there is no other option but jihad for Allah, and this is why jihad is the way.”

Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the world’s most popular and authoritative Sunni cleric, is a Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Egyptian based in Qatar. A return to his home country would be dangerous for Israel and the West.

By Lee Smith | Feb 9, 2011 7:00 AM

President Barack Obama believes that lending American prestige to the Muslim Brotherhood will not pave the way for an eventual Islamist takeover of Egypt. “There are a whole bunch of secular folks in Egypt, there are a whole bunch of educators and civil society in Egypt that wants to come to the fore as well,” the president told Bill O’Reilly in a Super Bowl Sunday interview.

According to the president, the way to empower America’s friends is to “get all the groups together in Egypt for an orderly transition and the one that is a meaningful transition.” As if Egypt’s liberal current isn’t weak enough already, Obama believes that the best way to ensure the sharks don’t come out on top is to throw a whole bunch of liberal guppies into the tank as well.

While the parallels between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011 can be overdrawn, it is foolish to pretend that they are not there. Cairo doesn’t have to literally become a Sunni version of Tehran to do terrible damage to U.S. interests and prestige in the Middle East—and to the hopes and dreams of its own people. And the Egyptians already have their own prospective Khomeini: Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher who exiled himself from Egypt in 1961.

I mentioned the massive, $300 million Gore-bastic global warming hype ad campaign a few weeks ago. I thought the Robertson/Sharpton pairing was going to be bad, but it’s nothing compared to these two stiffs on a couch peddling eco-alarmism. There was a time when Newt Gingrich and the Beltway GOP establishment could be counted on to defend free market environmentalism, property rights, and rational cost-benefit analyses. No more:

Aerial View of Oil Refinery Saudi oil refinery. WikiLeaks cables suggest the amount of oil that can be retrieved has been overestimated. Photograph: George Steinmetz/Corbis

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.

To go with toilets that don’t flush and light bulbs that don’t light, we now have dishwashers that don’t wash.Jan 31, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 19 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

My dishwasher is the Bosch SHE58C—an amazing machine. Stainless-steel front, concealed controls, six cycles to choose from. The manual runs a brisk 63 pages. When we got the Bosch, I read it cover to cover, highlighting and annotating as I went, marking the manufacturer’s preferred method of arranging dishes and the proper way to sit utensils in the dedicated wash basket. I took some pains to relay this information to my wife, though it did not please her as much as I imagined it would.

At first, my Bosch was wonderful. Quiet as a wind’s whisper, the dishes were so clean you could eat off of them. But a few months ago I started noticing problems. A fork would come out with food between the tines; a glass would have bits of grime stuck to the bottom. Surely this was a fluke? Alas, no. My dishwasher no longer shines. What went wrong?

It so happens that in the last six months, a lot of people have suddenly discovered their dishwashers don’t work as well as they used to. The problem, though, isn’t the dishwashers. It’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, America’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink.

One of the key ingredients in dish detergent is (or was) phosphorus. Phosphorus is a sociable element, bonding easily and well with others. In detergent, it strips food and grease off dirty dishes and breaks down calcium-based stains. It also keeps the dirt suspended in water, so it can’t reattach to dishes. Best of all, it prevents the washed-away grime and minerals from gumming up the inner-workings of your dishwasher. Traditionally, phosphorus was loaded into dish detergent in the form of phosphates, which are compounds of phosphorus bonded to oxygen. (PO4 if you’re keeping score at home.) Prior to last July, most detergents were around 8 percent elemental phosphorus. Now they’re less than 0.5 percent phosphorus.

There are, of course, many different ways of categorizing historical revolutions. But for the purposes of understanding what is happening in Egypt -- and the challenges it may pose for the United States -- one simple, rough distinction may be especially useful. This is the distinction between revolutions that look more like 1688 and revolutions that look more like 1789. The first date refers to England's "Glorious Revolution," in which the Catholic, would-be absolute monarch James II was overthrown and replaced by the Protestant William and Mary and the English Parliament claimed powerful and enduring new forms of authority. The second is, of course, the date of the French Revolution, which began as an attempt to create a constitutional monarchy but ultimately led to the execution of King Louis XVI, the proclamation of the First French Republic, and the Reign of Terror.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Treasurys extended a weeklong fall on Tuesday after the government's auction of $32 billion in new debt met with tepid demand. The yield on the 10-year note rose to the highest level in 10 months.

The government auctioned three-year notes at a yield of 1.34 percent. That's the most expensive borrowing cost the government has had to pay on those notes since last May.

Foreign buyers showed weak interest in the sale. Indirect bidders, a rough proxy for foreign funds and banks, took 27 percent of the notes, the lowest share since May 2007.

Soaring Oil Price Threatens U.S. EconomyAs chaos spreads through the Arab world, here's one way we can protect ourselves.February 8, 2011 - by Robert Zubrin

In recent weeks, the price of oil has climbed above $90 per barrel. As chaos spreads through the Arab world, we could soon see much worse. With these facts in mind, it is essential that U.S. policymakers act to protect the U.S. economy from this ever-worsening trend.

The likely impact of a new oil price rise is shown in the graph below, which compares oil prices (adjusted for inflation to 2010 dollars) to the U.S. unemployment rate from 1970 to the present. It can be seen that every oil price hike for the past four decades, including those in 1973, 1979, 1991, 2001, and 2008, was followed shortly afterwards by a dramatic rise in American unemployment.

WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secretsThe US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.**Much worse than the snubs of the Brits Barry has done up to now.

February 8, 2011I have to take a 3rd shot at Larry Tribe's op-ed: That big word "choice."

Here's my first shot and here's my second shot at Larry Tribe's op-ed purporting to say why the Supreme Court will come down in favor of the constitutionality of the individual mandate to buy health insurance. I didn't set out to write one post after another about the op-ed, but I must go on to talk about his use of the word "choice" — which is monumentally important in the discussion of abortion rights. Tribe's op-ed has nothing to say about abortion. I wonder if he would have written it differently if abortion had crossed is mind, but I can't believe that a constitutional law professor would overlook the abortion-related significance of the word "choice."

Tribe's op-ed, as I wrote in the first post, rests very heavily on misrepresenting the Supreme Court's commerce power doctrine as referring to "commercial choices." In fact, the cases refer to "commercial activities," and a switch from "activity" to "choice" is immensely important in the health care litigation, in which opponents stress that the failure to buy insurance is inactivity, not activity, and therefore beyond even the broadest interpretations the Supreme Court has ever given to the Commerce Clause.

Tribe attempted to skew opinion by substituting "choice" for "activity," and I have called him on that. But I need to go further, because someone who uses words to get things done needs to be kept honest not only about shifting from one word to another, but also about changing the meaning of the same from case to case. Let's look at how Tribe talked about "choice" and health insurance and then see how that squares with what "choice" is supposed to mean in the abortion context.

In today's op-ed, Tribe wrote:

Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public will pick up the tab. This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.

You can see that Tribe has given a very broad definition to the notion of choice. People bumble along, doing what they want, aware of the chance of an undesirable outcome, vaguely expecting to take advantage of an out that isn't very nice. That's a choice. It is something real and specific that the individual has done. Society can, as a group, based on our idea of the good, say to that person: We are now going to require you to take responsibility at that early decision point of yours. So Tribe says.

Now, apply that to abortion. If we take a similarly broad view of choice, we could say — as anti-abortion advocates do — that women who know they may be fertile have a choice when they go ahead and have sexual intercourse with a man. They can refrain from having sex, but if they go forward, they know that if they need emergency-room care get that they can’t pay for get pregnant, the public will pick up the tab they can get an abortion.

Of course, the Supreme Court case law does not present the woman's right to choose in terms of taking responsibility at that early point. It says:

These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

The choice that matters is an elaborate process of high-level reflection that occurs after the woman becomes pregnant — that is, when it's too late to take the precautions that the majority might have liked her to take so that she would not show up with the demand for something it wants to prevent.

I realize there are many distinctions that can be made between health insurance and abortion, but there is so much sophistry around the word "choice" that I think it's important to concentrate on what choice means and how it matters in the law. It seems to me that society, acting through a legislature, may have a preference about when an individual should be required to make a choice, and that the individual, valuing autonomy, may want a broader range of choice than the majority would like to permit. When we think about government power and individual autonomy, how consistent must we be about what "choice" means?

February 8, 2011Professor Tribe would like you to know how nonpartisan the Supreme Court Justices are ... I mean, will be, when they decide the individual mandate question the way he would like.The NYT has an op-ed by lawprof Larry Tribe that purports to demonstrate how obvious it supposedly is that the Supreme Court will find the health care law constitutional.

The justices aren’t likely to be misled by the reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only economic “activity,” not “inactivity,” like the decision not to purchase insurance. This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public will pick up the tab. This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.

Of course, the argument Tribe likes was presented, considered, and rejected in the 2 federal court cases. It's a perfectly comprehensible argument, but that doesn't make its success in the Supreme Court a sure thing. Acting as if it does, Tribe says "it’s distressing that many assume its fate will be decided by a partisan, closely divided Supreme Court." Oh, you terrible people who fail to bow to the obviousness of one side of a constitutional argument! You compound your sins by falling prey to the upsetting belief that the Supreme Court Justices are politically partisan!

To imagine Justice Scalia would abandon that fundamental understanding of the Constitution’s necessary and proper clause because he was appointed by a Republican president is to insult both his intellect and his integrity.

That's not sarcasm. Read the whole thing. You'll see, it's not intentional sarcasm. It might be an attempt to sweet-talk Scalia into using the health-care litigation to score some political neutrality points, but it's not sarcasm. It's more: Ah! What a fine Justice, full of integrity and intellect, I will say Justice Scalia is if he decides this case my way!

Oh! People are sooooo unfair to Justice Kennedy. I, Larry Tribe, will protect him from the scurrilous "swing vote" remarks people make.... when he decides this case my way!

Yes, his opinion in the 5-4 decision invalidating the federal ban on possession of guns near schools is frequently cited by opponents of the health care law.

I hope they do a better job of pointing at the Lopez case than that NYT link does. Here's the right link, in case anyone cares.

But that decision in 1995 drew a bright line between commercial choices, all of which Congress has presumptive power to regulate, and conduct like gun possession that is not in itself “commercial” or “economic,” however likely it might be to set off a cascade of economic effects.

Drew a bright line, eh? But the line, if you can call it a line, isn't about "commercial choices." That's Tribe's phrase — as he assures us the line is bright! — and what the Court said was "commercial activity" — which is why the argument about the distinction between activity and inactivity has been so important in the health care litigation. Tribe declares lines to be bright precisely at the point when he is shedding darkness. (If you think you can't shed darkness, I agree. I'm just riffing on the linguistic oddity of the lawyer's expression "bright line." Aren't easy-to-see lines usually dark — like black ink on white paper?)

The decision about how to pay for health care is a quintessentially commercial choice in itself, not merely a decision that might have economic consequences.

"Quintessentially" is such a strong word that perhaps you will not notice that it's next to the phrase that is not "economic activity."

Only a crude prediction that justices will vote based on politics rather than principle would lead anybody to imagine that Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito would agree with the judges in Florida and Virginia who have ruled against the health care law.

Oh, come on. Tribe's rhetorical move has become comical at this point. It reminds me of an old-fashioned mother exerting moral pressure on a child by telling him how sure she is that he is such a good little boy that he could never do whatever it is she doesn't want him to do. Put more directly, it's an assertion of authority: I'm telling you what's right and if you don't do it, you'll be wrong. Could the Justices possibly yield to pressure like that? It's crude to think that they would, isn't it? It's an insult both their intellect and their integrity.

We should be scared. This administration is the living, breathing example of "credentialed, not educated". I think it's pretty clear that the empty suit has no clue what to do. The only thing in our favor at the moment is that the Egyptian power structure is much smarter and far more competent than ours.

Their strategy appears to be one of divide and conquer the disparate factions while outwaiting the crowds. It might just work.

1. Clever individuals/groups that understand psywar shape their message to appeal to the target audience. What words tend to resonate with us?

2. There is a bias shaped by the fact that our media has very few resources to draw upon that don't speak english. Those in Egypt that are proficient in english may well have a western philosophical orientation that is atypical of the population. Were an arab language media organization to interview arabic speakers in the US, do you think those arabic speakers here would tend to be valid representations of mainstream American opinions? If you doubt my description of Egyptian opinion, scroll back and read up on the validated polls done in years past.

3. In making strategic choices, one must choose between the real choices offered and not the theoretical best choice one might wish for. Best wishes and unrealistic hope is what keeps the lights on in the casinos in Vegas. A lack of a decisive, pragmatic leadership is why we must worry about a nuclear Iran. An Islamic Republic of Egypt is even more catastrophic in the long term.

I'd love to see Egypt become a beacon of freedom in the arab world. The dominoes could then fall in another direction. Egypt is the center of gravity, and will tend to pull surrounding nations in whatever way it moves.

I think the Egyptian military has a major hand to play here, and my hope is that they keep Egypt a friend to us and at least the cold peace with Israel when they contribute to the post-Mubarak government.

Egypt could fall into the hands of radical Islamists as a result of the country's uprising, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Netanyahu warned about the result of the riots in Egypt over the past two weeks while speaking at an event for European diplomats held at the Knesset on Monday.

"Egyptians can choose a state with secular reforms. However, there is also another possibility that the Islamists will exploit the situation in order to gain governance over the country and lead it backward," the Prime Minister said.

"The third possibility is that [Egypt] will go in the direction of Iran," Netanyahu said, adding that they would "oppress the country and threaten all those surrounding it."

I find it hard to muster up much sympathy for these individuals. No, they weren't spies, yes the mullahs are our enemies. We have much bigger and better reasons than them to wage war on Iran, but nothing but hugs will be forthcoming from this president.

What of the Copts? What if other arab nations, including the Saudis and Jordan fall into the clutches of the Jihadists? The purpose of Iraq was to create a viable alternative to either the jihadis and the strongmen. Thrusting Egypt into the arms of the jihadists is not consistent with that policy.

It is difficult trying to figure out what the left’s position is on democracy and the Middle East. Here’s a brief effort.

Once upon a time, a number of prominent liberals — among them Thomas Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid — thought it was a good idea to remove Saddam Hussein and supplant his Baathist rule with democracy. I say that with confidence since one can watch the speeches of the senators in question on YouTube debating the 23-writ authorizations to use force in October 2002, in addition to reading the New York Times and Newsweek editorials between 2002-3 of prominent liberal columnists. The New Republic stable of authors was particularly in favor of the Bush-Cheney “just war” to invade Iraq. Jonathan Chait (who would go on to author an infamous essay about why “I hate George Bush”) and Peter Beinhart were especially hard on the fellow left for not joining the Bush effort.

By early 2004, almost all that liberal support had entirely dissipated, predicated on two developments. First, a presidential election was just months away and Bush’s war was no longer “mission accomplished” but turning into a campaign liability. Second, a resistance had formed under hard-core Islamists that was beginning to take a heavy toll on American forces. No WMD had been found, and it was now easy to suggest that one could withdraw support for building democracy in Iraq because two of the 23 writs for going to war were no longer operative, the effort was probably lost, and George W. Bush might well deservedly not be reelected.

No matter. Bush pressed on. His polls sunk yet he was barely reelected. His ongoing “democracy” agenda got little support from those who once had enthusiastically praised the Iraqi adventure and had proclaimed their belief in universal human rights. Few came to Sec. of State Rice’s support when in 2005 she chastised Hosni Mubarak’s regime to grant fundamental rights. Fewer saw any connection between Saddam’s fate and America’s pro-democratic stance and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the fright of Mr. Gaddafi who gave up his WMD arsenal, or the sudden willingness of Pakistan to harness Dr. Khan.

Instead, “spreading democracy” was seen by the left as a wounded George Bush’s quirky tic. His talk about “universal” freedom was ridiculed more as a manifestation of a sort of evangelical Christianity than genuine political idealism. Bush’s zeal for democracy, then, was orphaned: the right was now realist again (“they are either incapable of democracy or not worth the effort to implant it”) and the left multicultural (“who are we of all people to say what sort of government others should employ?”).

Guns tracked by firearms bureau found at firefight sceneTwo AK-47s bought in Arizona were used in a firefight that left a Border Patrol agent dead last month. The discovery comes amid a growing congressional investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

PHOENIX - A U.S. senator is examining a claim that two guns sold in purchases sanctioned by federal firearms agents were later used in a December shootout that left a Border Patrol agent dead near the Arizona-Mexico border.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said in a letter provided Monday to The Associated Press he had received information that appears to partially corroborate the claim received by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the guns.

"Members of the Judiciary Committee have received numerous allegations that the ATF sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw buyers, who then allegedly transported these weapons throughout the Southwest border area and into Mexico," reads a letter sent Thursday from Grassley to Kenneth Melson, acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The letter does not elaborate on the role possible of federal agents in the sale of the guns, and it could not be determined if the purchases were part of a sting operation.